


plenitude

by Hinn_Raven



Series: RVB Fluff Week [8]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Recovery, RvB Fluff Week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-16 18:30:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,783
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11258517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinn_Raven/pseuds/Hinn_Raven
Summary: Wash is now home, and trying to recover. But healing isn't always easy, especially not when his mind is fighting against him. Luckily, he's got help.





	plenitude

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hakanaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hakanaki/gifts).



> hakanakiki requested that I write a fluffy sequel to the (first place for mods!) entry for Angst War, deprivation. 
> 
> **Warnings for** : Past captivity, brainwashing, abuse

The first time Wash has a panic attack after they rescue him, he accidentally gets locked in a broom closet. They’re not sure what he was _doing_ in there—he wanders a lot when he can’t be with Tucker or Grif, and it’s not the first time someone’s found him in a weird place, but it’s the first time someone’s accidentally locked him in.

The minute the door closes and the lights are switched off, they start to hear the sobbing.  

It’s one of the cadets who closed the door and flipped the switch to leave Wash in total darkness, and they freak out immediately and run to get Tucker, because Agent Washington is curled up on the ground and whimpering and crying and they don’t know what to do.

Tucker’s there in an instant.

They haven’t found the base where Felix and Locus kept Wash yet, but Tucker and the others have pieced things together. It seemed to have involved a complicated system of punishments and rewards, and a bunch of signals that they don’t know but Wash is constantly receiving.

It appears being locked in a small, dark room was one of the punishments.

The door hadn’t even been locked; the door doesn’t lock at all, but it’s not like Wash tried the doorknob. There are burn marks on his hands, old scars now, but they’re circular, and Grey has guessed that Wash tried to open doorknobs with a large amount of electricity coursing through them to convince Wash never to try to open a closed door.

Wash isn’t sobbing anymore, but he’s shaking on the floor, curled up on his side, his breath coming in sharp, painful sounding gasps. Tucker instinctively falls to his knees in reaches out towards Wash. Wash looks up at him, and his mouth falls open, making those little noises he makes when he’s _really_ scared, ones that almost sound like he’s trying to beg not to be hurt again. And he’s looking at Tucker with those eyes, with that expression, and Tucker knows that this is the way he looked at Locus when he was being punished. In this moment, there is no difference between him and Locus, and it makes Tucker sick to his stomach.

Tucker hates those noises and that expression more than just about anything, right now. He reaches out, and Wash flinches back, only to freeze up when Tucker starts petting his hair. Tucker runs his fingers through Wash’s locks—damp with sweat, dirty because they’re still not sure if they can let him to take a shower on his own, but still soft to the touch, blonde streaked with grey—and doesn’t say anything, just keeps his hand there, a warm and comforting presence.

Wash lets out a whimper, and tentatively presses up into the pressure. Tucker keeps going, carefully adjusting the way he’s sitting so his legs are stretched out, like he was dealing with a cat. Slowly, as Wash starts to relax, his face still shiny with tears, Tucker pulls Wash towards him, until Wash is seated in his lap, face pressed into Tucker’s shoulder, Tucker’s hand carding through Wash’s hair, while his other hand rubs circles into his back.

“It was just an accident, okay?” Tucker whispers, even though he’s not remotely sure Wash even can understand them. Grey has concerns about permanent damage to Wash’s language processing centers because of the drugs they filled him with—she’s waiting for the results from the bloodwork before making any conclusions. None of them have heard Wash say a single word since he’d yelled Tucker’s name on that call, a response that Tucker knows now had to be a conditioned one. Wash had to have been almost completely, if not _completely_ completely, under their control by that time. The timeline doesn’t work out otherwise.

It doesn’t mean that the way that Wash had screamed his name is going to stop haunting Tucker’s nightmares anytime soon though.

Wash lets out a few more noises, but these ones are almost questioning. Maybe he _does_ understand.

“They didn’t realize you were in here, Wash,” he says, as soothingly as he can manage when all he wants to do is bring Locus back to life so he can kill him slower this time. That fucker didn’t deserve a quick death. He deserves to hurt as much as Wash is hurting now. “They didn’t mean to lock you in. You didn’t do anything bad. You’re not being punished. I wouldn’t… I promise you, no one’s going to lock you up like that again, okay? No one. Not ever. I won’t let them.”

Wash shudders in his grip, and his hands fist suddenly in Tucker’s shirt, as if trying to pull him even closer.

Tucker hooks his chin on Wash’s head, and feels Wash’s breathing slowly steady out beneath him as he stops shaking.

“It’s going to be okay Wash,” he says. “It’s all going to be okay.”

* * *

Wash wakes up taking a gasping, shuddering breath. There’s an arm thrown over his chest, pulling him against a warm body, and immediately he relaxes.

His first instinct is to check to make sure no one noticed he wasn’t being still, but then he remembers.

This is Tucker holding him, this is Tucker snoring softly, pressed against him to give him comfort. Tucker, who pulled him out of the snow and helped change his armor and yelled at him in a canyon.

Locus is dead. There is no one to punish Wash for tossing and turning at night or waking up screaming.

Wash can wake up however he wants to now.

His stomach growls, and Wash hesitates. He has options right now. He could wait until morning, like his instincts, honed by Locus and Felix tell him to. He could wake up Tucker and ask for help.

Or…

Wash carefully shifts Tucker’s arm so as not to disturb him, and creeps down the hallway towards one of the places on the base where he knows he’ll be able to find food, even at this hour.

There’s not a lot of options; protein bars, a few basic sweets, some fruit that Wash instinctively avoids, even now that there’s no Felix or Locus to inflict those punishments.

He picks up a basic ration bar; they weren’t punishment food or reward food. It just indicated another night alone in his cell, which is fine, because he’s going back to Tucker right after this.

His hands are shaking as he removes the wrapper, but he is going to _do this_. He lifts the bar to his mouth and takes as small a bite as he can manage.

Grey’s the one who finds him, curled up around the sink in the kitchen, sweating and pale and vomiting.

“I’m sorry, Agent Washington,” she says sympathetically. This late at night, she’s not in her armor, which Wash still finds to be a source of relief. Armor is still hard, especially armor with bright colors.

“Stupid,” he mutters. “I can’t even _eat_ on my own.”

“You’re getting there,” she tells him, placing her hand on his back. Wash lets out a pathetic sounding whimper at that. “You’re doing so well, Wash. You’re ahead of schedule, I promise you. Eating food only when it’s provided by your handler was one of the first elements of your conditioning. You’re not going to throw it off quickly.”

“I hate it,” Wash says, knuckles pale against the porcelain of the sink. “I hate it, I _hate it_ , I hate—”

“Do you want me to wake Tucker up? Grif’s awake if you’d rather not. You _should_ eat something.”

“You have the recording?” Wash mutters, cheeks red. He just counts himself lucky that Grif took being assigned the role of secondary handler and trainer so well.

“Of course!” She says. “Let’s go find him then.” She takes her hand away and Wash bites his lip to stop himself from protesting. She notices anyways—because of course she does, and smiles at him, placing her hand on the small of his back as they walk down the hall.

It’s another thing that reminds Wash that he’s no longer Charon’s weapon; even on his best behavior, he’d never be allowed this. _Especially_ not right after he’d tried to eat food from somewhere that wasn’t Locus’s hand. Or Tucker’s. Because Locus was dead.

Grif is lying on a couch in one of the common areas, not asleep. He sits up when he sees them, only slightly, but enough that it’s an acknowledgement of their presence. “What did you do this time?” He asks, and Wash flinches slightly, almost expecting a slap, even though Grif has never done anything to deserve that.

“He tried to eat on his own, Captain Grif! Would you mind?” Grey handed over a small plastic bag full of food to Grif. Wash hadn’t noticed when she’d grabbed that. Had she had that the whole time?

Grif sighs loudly, but he takes the bag and starts fiddling through it. “What do you want, Wash? There’s chocolate in here— _seriously_? I can’t find this stuff in the commissary, have you been fucking hoarding it?”

“ _Ahem_ ,” Grey says reproachfully.

“Right, fine. What do you want?”

“Just granola,” Wash mutters. His stomach is too delicate to handle anything rich, although he desperately wants chocolate.

Grif looks at Grey, who pulls out the small remote, and presses the button.

“You can eat with Grif,” Tucker’s voice says, tinny and small, but enough to convince Wash’s brain that this is okay, this is allowed.

Grif holds it out at face height, and Wash leans forward and takes a bite. Once he’s done with the whole thing, he drinks water from the bottle Grey hands him, and heads to bed, taking the bag of food with him, but leaving the chocolate behind for Grif.

Tucker’s awake, looking at him with concern. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Wash says. Tucker will hear about the food thing in the morning. Wash doesn’t want to talk about it anymore; he just wants to go back to sleep.

Wash gets back into bed—Tucker technically has his own room, but ever since Wash figured out talking again, Tucker spends every night here, holding Wash through the nightmares, providing him with the physical contact Wash has been starving for since long before Felix and Locus captured him.

Wash buries his face in the crook of Tucker’s neck and lets Tucker wrap his arms around him. Tucker presses a kiss against his forehead, and Wash takes deep breaths, trying to ground himself.

“Goodnight,” he says, just to prove to himself that he _can_ still speak, that this is something that he knows how to do.


End file.
